I am so sorry. What a horrible thing to happen. It's as though the evil of 70 years ago is still echoing. There aren't any helpful words, only sorrow for those who die in public service and faith in your country's ability to recover from the hardest of blows. But surely you're due a century or two off now?

It's so awful. I just read an article on this ten minutes and shuddered. I don't even know how they're supposed to cope with that. It read like the majority of the major players in their government are just gone. But aren't there usually protocols for that? So things like this don't happen.

It's not uncommon to have a number of top officials commuting together in cases like this. The US has protocols to make sure there aren't too many, but it is unusual in the amount it spends on transport for its government officials. Most other countries, like Poland, make a virtue of economy.

There are still, the Times tells me, enough senior parliamentarians to keep the government running smoothly, and the military personnel will have an even smoother transition of power, but these things usually hit a country's heart.

I remember how, under very different circumstances, we felt when Mountbatten was killed. He was mostly out of public life by then, but it was still such a gaping void.

The only such loss I know of that was met with a degree of equanimity was the loss of Australian Prime Minister Harold Holt who went for a swim one day and disappeared. Because his body was not found, the whole thing took on an absurd dimension that made it a bit easier for the Australians, though when you speak with people who knew or worked with the man, they still show their grief. As for the general public, in typical Australian spirit, they named a swimming centre after him.

It is really sad and tragic. At least there shouldn't be terrorists involved. Terrorism would make it even worse.

I couldn't help thinking about MS Estonia. The ship sank 1994 crossing the Baltic Sea from Tallinn to Stockholm. Whole towns and companies in Estonia and Sweden lost their leaders and other personnel. Not only too many lost lives but the incident left the mourning people to sort out a chaos.

I hope that the people in the crashed plane died quickly and didn't have to suffer.

Our news covered the story for ten minutes tonight, I think seeing the President's brother trying to be stoic was the hardest thing of all.

And very sadly, I did know that. I remember sitting with a group of my Eastern and Northern European friends (mostly émigrés) while they played 'My country has had it worse than yours' and in the end the Estonian and the Pole tied, because while the Estonians had been invaded more often, the Poles had had more awful incursions.

Ironically, the conversation ended with us all agreeing that things were looking immensely better for all of Europe at long last. It was in 1990. Little did we know.